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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 JULY 30

 

Good Evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks. The US Civil Rights Activist could not have spoken truer words – ‘short term alliances political alliance built on expediency will fail’.

 

But not only are short term alliances doomed to fail, they are also very destructive of trust and will debilitate attempts at going forward especially at the instance of the old foxes and slippery mongooses leading the charge.

 

If our politics were not advanced beyond the separatist silver fox on the one side and the baby kissing, old lady hugging hypocrite on the other; if these political principals’ poisoned serums continue to be prescribed on public radio by ill-mannered, dragged-up, two-faced, un-cultured, un-educated rascals and vermin’s; if the perception that what we have really are two different Trinbagoes -- civil disturbances and disorder are not an impossibility.

 

Some persons may well be regretting that they brought Rev. Sharpton here. The good Reverend must have been taken as ‘window dressing’ and perhaps an item for the elections campaign but it seems that some political pundits have played a bad ball and buss on their average. The US Civil Rights Activist admonished that you can’t just build around your race or nationality – building for expediency will not work – when you have broad coalition built around principles, they work!

 

Alliances that are essentially arrangements of short term political convenience and in which veteran foxes do not respect the rabbits nor do the rabbits trust the fox – will go nowhere. Their SUN is set and only darkness now falls upon the few rays of light which they once had. They are dead but are ashamed to lay it down.

 

They next side is not faring too well either although a very busy national cash register affords them to cover every sore with band aid. They are experiencing internal convulsions which may erupt into full fledged sores which may require poultice. In all of these, the people are the ones who are the victims. And it is essentially because of what politics is. It is more than just elections. It is an activity – a collective activity. It has to do with interests – sometimes, conflicting interests because of society being stratified into classes. But we shall delve deeper into this as comprehensively as a necessary – next time.

 

Have a good evening – watch the road you motorists who are sometimes speeding to nowhere.

 

I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks.

 

 

 

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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 JULY 27

 

Good evening friends and comrade citizens - welcome again to constructive and common sense talk – welcome to the OWTU Speaks.

 

It has often been said that common sense is not common. It is also suggested, almost as a corollary, that the uncommon-ness of common sense can be dangerous especially with the quadruped of horse genus with long ears who abuse the privilege of the power they assume that they exercise as they sit at the controls of their Radio frequencies. The popularity of such reprobate talk show ignoramuses and their asinine vituperation on air is but one example of how the society has degenerated.

 

Ordinary folk with just a little common sense, and who are today reflecting on the frightening events of 1990 and the collapsed systems and dysfunctional social arrangements which provided the conditions for them, - will easily assimilate the profound statement which this commentator made last Friday and extracts of which were carried in the Media and the Press.

 

I said to my Union’s Conference of Delegates that it profits us little to win 25% wage increases for workers only for them to be ravaged by crime, social breakdown, the collapse of the health care and education systems, a judiciary that seems incapable of dispensing justice and a political system that promotes the division of the citizenry by race, religion, party affiliation and geography to the point where civil war is a possibility. Such is the rot that now permeates our native land.

 

I said that in the last twelve months the national crisis has worsened. For example, a year ago there was a Chief Justice facing possible impeachment, today he has been joined by a Chief Magistrate who is facing disciplinary charges before the Judicial and Legal Services Commission. A year ago the Opposition party was deeply divided today we have two opposition parties sitting in Parliament. A year ago there were signs that the ruling party was engaged in arbitrary decision making and abusing its power, today, those signs are ever more apparent as it openly declares its intention to obtain a parliamentary majority at the upcoming General Elections such that it will be able to amend the Constitution. And as we learnt in our own Public Policy Forum, the amendments which the ruler-ship of the PNM wishes to introduce could well result in a constitutional dictatorship.

 

I emphasized that the working people are presented with the predicament of an election at the same moment when the country is facing these crises, not the least of which is of leadership as manifest by:

 

=          A Ruling Party that is bankrupt of ideas and vision

=          An Opposition Party that is morally bankrupt and corruptly diseased

=          A contender for Office who perhaps can’t identify the hares from the hounds around him.

=          “Of course this latter comment has been given credence by Devant Maharaj’s characteristic UNC outburst”.

 

In my capacity as President General of the OWTU and my personal and individual capacity as an independent, fearless and objective citizens and national of this country I said what I said without malice, ill will or spite for anyone but with favour, support and commitment to struggle for the workers’ and national interest of Trinidad and Tobago.

 

I could have said what I said because I do not have to sing for my supper. For all of my years of hard work – honest fulfilling hard work, I ensured that I wont have to sing on Radio or anywhere else for my supper.

 

Let us save Trinidad and Tobago from going over the precipice. Let us halt the degeneration, the crime and the hate. Let us repair the conditions which that make for civil strife and further fracturing.

 

Have a good evening and a safe weekend. I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks.

 

 

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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 JULY 25

 

Good evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks. Here, we do not spew the garbage and excrement that are the fare of certain reprobate Radio Talk Show hosts. Here, we celebrate successful and enlightened people and struggle to improve the lot of the indigent, the otherwise dependent and certainly, we effect the best and top class workers representation for our members and the working class of Trinidad and Tobago.

 

About that IMF recommendation that Cost of Living Allowance be removed and obliterated from Collective Agreements! Let all be assured that the OWTU will not sit idly by and facilitate the continued subversion of the ‘free negotiation and Collective Bargaining Process’. This, among other respects, was struggled for and won by the mass intervention by the workers and the people in the 1937 General Strike and Insurrection. This, we are sure, the independent and politically free Trade Unions, their leaderships and members, will be mobilized to defend – not by talking only but by action some time soon – perhaps as soon as early September 2007.

 

The unprincipled interference by the Public Sector Negotiating Committee in the day-to-day Collective Bargaining process is bad enough! The neo-liberal, anti-worker policy recommendation of the IMF to the Government that COLA be outlawed is despicable!

 

COLA – the real thing – not its substitute application – COLA does not – has never – entrenched inflation. Mr. Max Alier of the IMF and neo-colonial minions who support his view, do not understand it and therefore don’t know what they are talking about and are attempting to establish what is really an ideological position, against the workers and the poor within the maxim of known IMF World Bank orthodoxies.

 

COLA does not entrench inflation! Prices, the value of money in relation to its purchasing power in the procurement of goods and services – these are the essential elements which fuel inflation. COLA seeks to adjust the deficiency caused by price inflation in the purchasing power of wages. Price movements affect the Official Index of Retail Prices (RPI) which in turn triggers the protective mechanism that COLA is designed to effect. In other words – ‘no price movement – no inflation increment – NO COLA COST! It is inflation which will entrench higher costs! COLA does not entrench inflation. What Mr Alier’s recommendation seeks to do is leave prices and profits uncapped and limitless and at the same time apply the most stringent controls on wages and employee benefits. Let us try to concretize the point on COLA vis-à-vis prices and profits.

 

A typical COLA Clause in our Collective Agreements reads as follows:

“An allowance of --- cents per hour for every one complete point rise above the base of – points as at ---- date.

If the Index of Retail Prices having risen at least one complete point above the base, shall subsequently fall, a deduction of --- cents per hour shall be made from the allowance specified for every fall of one complete point ---.

 

Now, what might anyone suggest as a better, more efficient and principled mechanism than that? If the index moves up the worker has a few cents added to his hourly rate. If the index subsequently falls, the employer deducts the few cents from the workers hourly rate! Who can beat that? “Only unbridled greed for profits and unconscionable price spirals can” – it is our view.

 

Have a safe evening, I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.

 

 

 

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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 JULY 23

 

‘The OWTU Speaks’ continues to provide the most direct and unambiguous position of the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union on several of the issues, matters and things affecting workers and the ordinary people in society. Welcome to this edition of the OWTU Speaks – welcome to its growing audience of ardent subscribers on Wack Radio 90.1 F.M.

 

Last weekend, the OWTU held one of the most successful of its Annual Conferences of Delegates. Indeed this 68th Annual conference was resoundingly successful. We opened on Friday evening with a most insightful Feature Address by respected Trade Unionist and current Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda – the Honourable Baldwin Spencer. The theme of Prime Minister Spencer’s address was – ‘Labour’s Role in constructing a Caribbean Nation based on Social Justice, Equity, Sustainable Development and Sovereignty.

 

The Feature Speaker’s treatment of the theme enjoyed the obvious benefit of, and was made richer by Hon Spencer’s experience in the vineyard as a leading Caribbean Trade Unionist and now his leadership of the Government and people of Antigua and Barbuda. The Antiguan Prime Minister joined a list of very distinguished Caribbean, West African, Asian and European personalities to have addressed the highest decision making body of the OWTU – the Annual Conference of Delegates.

 

On Saturday, at its business session, the Conference decided on all of the statutory and other matters which were brought before it. The General Council’s Report which detailed the work done by the leadership, professional staff, functional departments and agencies of the Union over the period June 1, 2006 to May 31, 2007 was unanimously received and adopted by the 200 strong delegates Conference.

The External Auditor’s Report and our Financial Statements of Accounts of Income of $10,094,321 and Expenditure of $7,591,782 for the year ended December 31 2006 and the Balance Sheet detailing the soundness of the OWTU’s health with a cost or valuation of assets of $30m also as at December 31 2006, were all received, vigorously debated and passed unanimously. The OWTU has a very stable and sound foundation and a tradition of popular democracy and independence.

 

As an immediate objective to ensuring sustainable growth and development, social justice and equity the Conference examined the question of Trade Union Unity and Labour’s intervention in the socio-political, socio-economic issues which now bedevil the country and which particularly affect the working class and the poor. In these regards, the Annual Conference endorsed the initiative of the President General to bring Unions and the Workers, Non-Governmental Organizations, Community Based Organizations, Farmers and Youth Organizations together in common activity and purpose and working together on concrete issues and around some agreed upon programmed of action. In the debate which promoted the endorsement of this initiative, the Conference noted and condemned the bombastic recommendation of the International Monetary Fund that Government should halt and prevent the inclusion of Cot of Living Allowance (COLA) in negotiated collective Agreements. We considered that if anything ought to stir the Trade Union Community and all workers to action, it must be the Bush-type lack of understanding, unintelligent and indeed ignorant instruction by Max Alier of the IMF to trammel our sovereignty and further undermine the process of free Bargaining as defined in ILO Convention #98 and ratified by Government on behalf of the people.

 

The Conference therefore decided unanimously that the OWTU pushes on with plans for a day of Solidarity in Popular Resistance in early September. It was sanctioned also that we go forward with an Integrity Platform and the development of the People’s Manefesto and Popular Agenda. The OWTU celebrates 70 years of Democracy, Progress, fearless struggle and positive achievements. And our renewal and constant regeneration will keep up invigorated for another 70!

 

Have a safe and enjoyable evening. I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.

 

 

 

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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 JULY 18

 

There have been some very positive responses to the Labour Day platform call, followed by letter dated June 22 last month – to join in common activity as a means to  bringing about ‘Unity’ of our Trade Unions.

 

This one seems to have been a long week! Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks.

My letter of invitation suggested that ‘all Trade Union Leaders should jointly organize a mass demonstration against the Public Sector Negotiation Committee’s (PSNC’s) position as such position goes counter to the workers’ claim for equity and justice. I particularly expressed that Trade Union unity ‘can best emerge out of a process of working together on concrete issues and around some agreed upon programmed of action”. My initiative suggested too that whatever programmed we may decide upon be promoted as Joint Trade Union NGO/CBO activity emphasizing the appropriateness of our making common cause with the very many other issues affecting citizens and the poor in the country. As I iterated at the start of this piece, there have been very positive responses to the call. There have also been one negative response and some which could only be described as posturing in vaccilitation. And of course there have been more non-responses among which we would find the more notable railers and lamentators on the issue of Trade Union unity far from being disappointed by the talk-plenty and meant-little who believe in individual self advancement based on splitism, we are, on the contrary, encouraged to proceed with staging common activity to which all will be again invited to demonstrate where they stand.

 

We will demonstrate against the PSNC’s unfair interference in the Collective Bargaining process at the state enterprise, public utilities and public sector entities. We will demonstrate against the subversion of local labour interests by government’s importation of cheap foreign labour.

 

We will demonstrate against dislocation of the farmers from lands on which they have spent their entire lives working for the country.

 

We will demonstrate against the big business eviction of the small people from their communities. We will demonstrate against high and rising food prices and the meager pensions of some public and private sector retirees.

 

We will demonstrate against the frustrations in effecting the National Youth Policy. We demonstrate against the long and frustrating process of trade union recognition and representation. We will demonstrate against a Public Health System that has all but collapsed. We will demonstrate against all of the social, economic and political disadvantages suffered by the workers and the poor in society.

 

Those leaders and unions, CBO’s and NGO’s who are interested in uniting our various communities will decide on a day in early September when we will make a loud noise for Peace, Social Justice, Bread and genuine democracy.

 

This weekend, the OWTU engages in its 68th Annual Conference of Delegates at which a review of our past work and on examination of our forward programmed will be done. This particular Conference of Delegates being held in the 70th year of the OWTU’s existence and the Anniversary of the 1937 Popular intervention by the people, will examine ‘Labour’s Role in Constructing a Caribbean Nation based on Social Justice, Equity, sustainable Development, Sovereignty and Solidarity. The Key Note address at our Conference Opening on Friday will be delivered by the Hon. Baldwin Spencer – the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda.

 

And this has been Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks, have a good evening.

 

 

 

 

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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 JULY 13

 

This one seems to have been a long week! Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks.

 

There might be a number of reasons that this past week seems so long. Our many activities and how they have impacted our senses are no doubt contributory to a perception that this week was different from others.

 

On Monday there was a sterile attempt at conciliation between the Power Generation Company and ourselves on issues affecting negotiations for improvements in pay and other terms and conditions of employment. The exercise is in fact sterile and has bee so for the past six months of this year not withstanding the Conciliator’s best efforts. Fact is that the employer seldom moves voluntarily to pay workers more and make their conditions of employment more acceptable and modern. Fact is that Union arguments – as decent and unassailable as we make them – if not accompanied by workers’ action, by itself, seldom yields anything. The Power Gen workers may have to shake themselves into electrifying movement by their management to bring about a wage a salary settlement such as our current economic circumstances will consider equitable. On Wednesday a tour of Trinmar’s Offshore operations was undertaken – weather conditions were less than inviting and the seas were rough! So rough were the waters than my bowl of blackeye peas pelau looked like a meal of rice and black eyed peas. It was not easy but it was absolutely necessary that the OWTU’S leadership survey and take not of the Petrotrin management’s negligence in its treatment of our appreciable resources at Trinmar.

 

Trinmar has today many more high paid consultants and special services contractors than it has ever had in its history. Yet, its production levels are the lowest in our experience – even as we import 100K bbls of foreign crude at $76. U.S. per barrel. With some quite ordinary work-over programmes and infrastructure improvement, Trinmar’s oil production can be improved to 50K b/d from the 25K bbls that is now the case.

 

The Management continues to pay $190.K (US) per month for the rental of a floating barge fitted with compression and oil separation facilities to handle only 4mmscf of gas and 5K bbls of liquids from the SWS field which will produce approximately 12 mmscf of gas and 15K bbls of oil per day if outfitted with proper facilities. The owners of the floating barge have been made multi millionaires many times over by Government’s and Petrotrin Management’s folly and perhaps questionable double dealing with foreign oil outfits – remember FW Oil of Houston Texas?

 

So, we toured South West Soldado, Main Field and East Field and had our view of Trinmar’s potential assured and the workers’ commitment reconfirmed to viability and successful operations of our national resources. It is this commentator’s intention to engage Petrotrin’s Management and their politician bosses and technocrats in a round table discourse on the effective exploitation of our oil resources to the extent that we can reduce foreign imports.

 

The week was made longer, or it may well be that our tolerance for BS was stretched further by another attempt at political hood-winking. The fox will fool only the most gullible and those who subscribe to the notion that morality is dead.

 

Unity among the wicked and profane is a big steups. Thank God its Friday. Have a safe weekend, I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks.

 

 

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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 JULY 09

 

Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks.

We found TTUTA’s repudiation of His Excellency’s descent into the political cut and thrust of the industrial relations struggle now existing, to be most appropriate. The Office of the President of the Republic, as is at present constituted, is expected to be insulated against and not open and expose itself to reproach from any quarter.

 

When political miscreants vilified and pilloried the Office of the President in 2000/2001, they enraged an already disgusted and embarrassed national community – yet, the President was never himself miscreant nor did he descend into the arena.

 

In the very recent, His Excellency found reason to identify certain positions taken by others to be disrespectful of the office. This may well have been so but assuming that it was – had there been a general subscription at all levels and from all quarters – to decency, good manners, respect, proper protocol – some office other than the President’s would have responded on the issue of a breach of the respect of the Officer of Head of State – real or perceived!

 

The older folk had good reason and a profound basis on which they asserted “if yuh not too old to stoop, I aint too yound to peep”.

 

This notwithstanding, the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association did remarkably well to repudiate the President of our Republic’s ill-advised comments on the matters concerning TTUTA and the CPO without any disrespect or reproach of the Office of the President.

 

The OWTU continues to be in solidarity with TTUTA for decent levels of remuneration and improved conditions of employment for Teachers.

 

Gwynne Dyer is one of the better contributors to material that make good reading in our daily newspapers. He is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries, it is advised. I found Gwynne Dyer’s piece today to be most informative and interesting. He forecasts ‘The end of cheap food’. He says – ‘The era of cheap food is over. The price of corn has doubled in a year and wheat futures are at their highest in a decade. Cheap food lasted for only 50 years. Before WW2 most families in the developed countries spent a third or more of their income on food as the poor majority in developing countries still do. The food price index in India has risen 11% in one year and in Mexico in January there were riots after the price of corn flour went up fourfold. In its annual assessment of farming trends, the UN predicted that by 2016, people in the developing countries will be eating 30% more beef, 50% more pig meat and 25% more poultry. The animals will need a great deal of grain, and meeting that demand will require shifting huge amounts of grain-growing land from human to animal consumption – so the price of grain and meat will most certainly go up. The global poor don’t care about the price of meat because they can’t afford it now anyway – but when the price of grain goes up, some of them will starve. And maybe they won’t have to wait until 2016 because the mania for ‘bio-fuels’ shifting huge expanses of land out of food production.

 

One-sixth of all the grain grown in the US this year will be ‘industrial corn’ destined to be converted into ethanol and burned in cars, and Europe, Brazil and China are all heading in the same direction. The amount of us farmland devoted to bio-fuels grew by 48% in the last year alone and hardly any new land was brought under the plough to replace the lost food production. In other big bio-fuel producers like China and Brazil it’s the same straight switch from food to fuel. In fact, the food market and the energy market are becoming closely linked, which is very bad news for the poor. As oil prices rise they pull up the price of bio-fuels as well, therefore making it more attractive for farmers to switch from food to fuel – Gwynne Dyer writes! Are there suggestions here that Trinidad’s Oil and Gas could be used to fuel Caribbean food production for Caribbean people? I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks!

 

 

 

 

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OWTU SPEAKS 2007 JULY 02

 

Good evening and welcome to the OWTU Speaks. It is not at all surprising that mouth pieces for private sector domination of the economy would call for more privatization of state sector entities as they (the private sector) see opportunities to make more money for themselves go by. And, they pretend that their call is in the interest of efficiency and better quality production of goods and services. They behave too in a manner that suggests a monopoly on the best business sense and management expertise, is possessed by them – of course, government’s lack of common sense and sometimes corrupt practices give justification to the private sector business’ claims. We are however without doubt that the monopoly that they do have is on profiteering and unconscionableness. Their one commitment is to the profit motive as they genuflect and worship at the altar of the ‘Almighty Dollar’.

 

The CLICO Empire aside, our local private sector money moguls have been a bunch of uncommitted cowards wanting everything cheap and peddled it dear. Today they assemble in their chamber meetings and then bleat all over the electronic media and in the pages of the newspaper that they are not allowed to manage enough and own more of the country’s economic activities.

 

They provoke many questions: What is responsible for the loss that TSTT will report on its last year’s performance? Which local private sector grouping was willing to invest resources in the fight for market share against the Digicel mounted assault? Or is it suggested that somebody here was prepared to replace Cable and Wireless? We are sure that the exponents of privatization are aware that government, even as majority shareholder in TSTT is not in the effective control of TSTT’s operations – and that if government were supplanted by another entity as shareholder, the ongoing battle between TSTT and Digicel would be no longer distanced than has been realized. Or, is Bill Smith proposing a local private sector buy out of Cable and Wireless’ interest in the regional telecommunications sector?

 

We can only speculate as to the privatization experts’ recommendation on a way forward out of private sector Guardian Life’s very poor performance in the recent past! We know what their position is on the Unit Trust Corporation which had consistently performed well and most efficiently but for some unfavourable market conditions in the last year.

 

Nor did the Hart Street merchants and their advisors come forward in 1993 with investable resources to rescue and build electricity generation capacity for our now burgeoning industrial manufacturing sector. Neither did they offer to buy US based Mirant’s 39% share in Power Gen. They are no doubt hoping that government would make all of the necessary capital investment and regenerate needed power plants and then divest T&TEC’s 51% shareholding in that monopoly concern to a fat and lazy local private sector.

 

Where were they when NP was a cash cow milched by every administration since its coming into being in 1972? Then it was thought, that the business of oil and gas was a mystery which only the transnational corporations could distill and process for profits. Then, today’s privatization theorists were very active receivers for the businesses which were themselves being bought out and which were cheating their workers out of their entitlements!

 

Where were the privateers when Texaco was turning its back on the rundown producing operations and a Refinery which we kept together with spit, tread tape and rubber bands? Now that Petrotrin has turned the corner and is realizing some profits and injecting massive capital investment in refining operations to satisfy a growing market for transportation fuels now that the sky seems the ceiling for oil and gas profits, we are being placated to return Petrotrin to the MNC’s or to quietly hand it over to an equally unconscionable local private sector whose only philosophy is optimal decision making for maximum people-less profit making.

 

Well Bill and his sister Lucy, their Goldsmith uncle William and associates, cronies and carpetbaggers, Lenny, Rajpaul, Harrysingh, Patrick, Jonesy and Val know that not over the OWTU’s dead body will they get away with that! Peace! Have a good evening.

 

I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.